Data mining: Big Brother is watching us

Published: Sunday, June 9, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Monday, June 10, 2013 at 9:23 a.m.

Americans of all political stripes should be concerned about the government’s data mining of phone and Internet records. And indeed they are, just not the way you might expect.

Former Vice President Al Gore calls the idea of secret blanket surveillance “obscenely outrageous.” Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the system “has proved meritorious because we have gathered significant information on bad guys and only on bad guys over the years.”

The phrase “over the years” is significant. Although news of the practice of mining big data broke like a tidal wave last week, it has been going on for at least seven years.

“As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s Democratic chairwoman. She called the renewal “lawful” under the Patriot Act’s Section 215 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Last month, when it was revealed the Justice Department was using the same kind of data mining to monitor Associated Press phone records, we strongly condemned these practices as a shocking disregard for First Amendment rights. Now it seems the government has a much wider net.

Since April, the government has been secretly collecting telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper reported Thursday. Later that day, The Washington Post revealed another top-secret document that showed the National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets.

Are these actions, as they have been described by privacy advocates, “beyond Orwellian?” Or is mining “metadata” — records of communications transactions minus content or names — a reasonable surveillance technique to keep our nation safe from terrorism?

Our Founding Fathers could not have envisioned the vast stores of data held by Google, Verizon and other communications and Internet giants. Since these networks are now a ubiquitous part of American life, they must be governed by the same laws that protect our rights to privacy. The question: Is mass data personal and subject to privacy constraints?

“The government has long argued that this information isn’t private or personal. It is, they say, the equivalent of looking at the envelope of a letter: what’s written on the outside is simple, functional information that’s essentially already public,” James Ball writes in The Guardian.

But when the government starts using data mining on records of news-gathering organizations, as it did with the AP, the result can compromise confidential sources that are the heart of the news-gathering process.

In data mining, the government uses computer algorithms to search for patterns of unusual activity that may mark terrorist plots, and can conduct surveillance retroactively. For instance, it could allow investigators to go back and look at phone records of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, former FBI Assistant Director Tom Fuentes told CNN. Normally, phone companies would not maintain those records for long due to storage capacity.

Why should we be worried? The Guardian’s Ball put it succinctly: “In essence, you’re being watched; the government just doesn’t know your name while it’s doing it.” By monitoring who you are speaking to, when and where calls are made and how long they last, the government can “build up a detailed picture of that person, their social network, and more.”

The collaboration between Big Government and Big Data crosses party lines. Tyler Newby, a former federal computer crime prosecutor under both the Bush and Obama administrations, told CNN the Bush administration collected the same sort of “metadata,” but it did so without getting a court order. The Obama administration’s actions came to light after it sought authorization through the secret FISA court in Washington.

Appellate courts are just starting to grapple with the question of whether metadata is private or public. We are now in uncharted waters. Cases testing these waters should be fast-tracked to the U.S. Supreme Court so Americans can know with certainty the limits of government surveillance authority.

<p>Americans of all political stripes should be concerned about the government’s data mining of phone and Internet records. And indeed they are, just not the way you might expect.</p><p>Former Vice President Al Gore calls the idea of secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous. Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the system has proved meritorious because we have gathered significant information on bad guys and only on bad guys over the years.</p><p>The phrase over the years is significant. Although news of the practice of mining big data broke like a tidal wave last week, it has been going on for at least seven years.</p><p>As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s Democratic chairwoman. She called the renewal lawful under the Patriot Act’s Section 215 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).</p><p>Last month, when it was revealed the Justice Department was using the same kind of data mining to monitor Associated Press phone records, we strongly condemned these practices as a shocking disregard for First Amendment rights. Now it seems the government has a much wider net.</p><p>Since April, the government has been secretly collecting telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper reported Thursday. Later that day, The Washington Post revealed another top-secret document that showed the National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets.</p><p>Are these actions, as they have been described by privacy advocates, beyond Orwellian? Or is mining metadata  records of communications transactions minus content or names  a reasonable surveillance technique to keep our nation safe from terrorism?</p><p>Our Founding Fathers could not have envisioned the vast stores of data held by Google, Verizon and other communications and Internet giants. Since these networks are now a ubiquitous part of American life, they must be governed by the same laws that protect our rights to privacy. The question: Is mass data personal and subject to privacy constraints?</p><p>The government has long argued that this information isn’t private or personal. It is, they say, the equivalent of looking at the envelope of a letter: what’s written on the outside is simple, functional information that’s essentially already public, James Ball writes in The Guardian.</p><p>But when the government starts using data mining on records of news-gathering organizations, as it did with the AP, the result can compromise confidential sources that are the heart of the news-gathering process.</p><p>In data mining, the government uses computer algorithms to search for patterns of unusual activity that may mark terrorist plots, and can conduct surveillance retroactively. For instance, it could allow investigators to go back and look at phone records of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, former FBI Assistant Director Tom Fuentes told CNN. Normally, phone companies would not maintain those records for long due to storage capacity.</p><p>Why should we be worried? The Guardian’s Ball put it succinctly: In essence, you’re being watched; the government just doesn’t know your name while it’s doing it. By monitoring who you are speaking to, when and where calls are made and how long they last, the government can build up a detailed picture of that person, their social network, and more.</p><p>The collaboration between Big Government and Big Data crosses party lines. Tyler Newby, a former federal computer crime prosecutor under both the Bush and Obama administrations, told CNN the Bush administration collected the same sort of metadata, but it did so without getting a court order. The Obama administration’s actions came to light after it sought authorization through the secret FISA court in Washington.</p><p>Appellate courts are just starting to grapple with the question of whether metadata is private or public. We are now in uncharted waters. Cases testing these waters should be fast-tracked to the U.S. Supreme Court so Americans can know with certainty the limits of government surveillance authority.</p>